The ARM-based device comes with any feature you could wish for, including a harddisk, GPS receiver, WLAN, Bluetooth, USB, PCMCIA, SD and a kitchensink. Looking at the device’s screenshots, it appears to be running Maemo, yet the company or its Chinese developers haven’t appeared publicly on the Maemo mailing lists. The software package announced for it is also unheard of on maemo.org.

Quite a mystery device. Do you know more? Do you have suggestions what I should ask them at CeBIT? Do you have information about it? Let me know!

Update: I’ve seen the device at CeBIT. It’s running Linux, it’s not Maemo but obviously inspired by it, it’s a lot bigger than I expected, it’s quite fascinating, it’s not a real competitor to the Nokia devices. The full report with pictures will follow tomorrow.

10 Responses to “Porient H9: So, is it Maemo? Let’s ask at CeBIT…”

Why is everybody so nervous about the device running Meamo, or even a lookalike? Isn’t Maemo open source? Did Nokia patent the “look and feel” of Maemo? If the answers to those questions are resp. “yes” and “no”, the H9 people can do whatever they like with it.

What interests me more is why the H9 can come with a mobile office suite while I, owner of two consecutive Nokia Internet Tablets, still have to make do with a cobbled together spreadsheet port (Gnumeric) and a half-working word processor (Abiword), neither of which ports have received a neutrino’s worth of support from Nokia.

I’d also like to know what kind — if any — of handwriting (or character) recognition software the H9 has, and if its maker managed to find something worse than in Nokia’s tablet. If they did, I would be truly surprised.

You are right, Karel, there is no problem for Porient to use Maemo on a non-Nokia device. Since everything they need for that is open source, they have every right to build their own flavour of Maemo.

But you’ve come to a different conclusion than me: If the H9 runs a variant of Maemo and comes with better software than Nokia’s device, why is this software not available to other Maemo users yet? Where are Porient’s contributions to maemo.org?

See, that’s what you get with all these device-locked “distributions”.

I am truly sorry that I am right in the middle of a complicated relocation at the moment, otherwise I would be actively helping “penguinbait” (on Internet Tablet Talk) porting straight Linux user interfaces to the Nokia (sofar: Windowmaker, ROX and — incredibly — KDE).

What he is doing makes a lot more sense than the entire Maemo development effort. He shows the community that Hildon and, ultimately, Maemo are stifling the Internet Tablet’s hardware more than that they are helping it.

My question would be, where is your GPL’d source code available? That is assuming that they used maemo indeed, but the screenshot seems to suggest that. I would be surprised, if they implemented a maemo lookalike in under two years from scratch without using any maemo code.

Thomas: Until this product isn’t sold to users, there is no requirement by the GPL to release source. So they can still develop their software without having to release the source right now.

Karel: Good points, and yes, it’s amazing that KDE can be used on the N800. Such a shame that there are still closed parts on the N800 and 770 hardware support side so that we cannot have a full alternative distribution on the thing, yet. That’s where I am most disappointed with Nokia so far.

But then again, there is still no other truly tablet-aware Linux desktop interface, except Maemo. Or is it? (There are Qtopia and GPE, but both are even more limited than Maemo and also require developers to adapt their applications; you cannot run “normal” X applications on them).

Maemo is the closest to such an interface I have seen so far. Gnome and KDE haven’t made any efforts yet to become tablet-friendly. Also, KDE and Gnome are both pretty bloated, while Maemo runs fine on the 770 hardware.

There are actually only two things needed for a “tablet-friendly” user interface (assuming that the touchscreen hardware is a given): a consistent and easy (I almost wrote “intuitive”, forgetting that nothing about computers is intuitive) way to navigate and select, and a consistent and easy way to enter text, ink and shapes.

Both of these requirements were met ten years ago by the Newton OS, and have been conveniently ignored by everybody else since. I’m going to let you in on a secret: one of the main reasons why I bought my 770 and N800 was that Paul Guyot’s Einstein (NewtonOS emulation) and Relativity (hardware virtualisation) projects had a functioning, albeit limited, beta for the Internet Tablet; I’m still hoping he’ll finish the project (or at the very least get a reasonably swift and featured beta out), because the moment I’ve got my MessagePad’s ROM extracted, it’s goodbye forever to Hildon and Maemo on my Internet Tablet.

If you really think Maemo is that good, then I’d advise you to (re?)read Sean Luke’s article (http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/n800/). I have been a Newton user for five years and his article opened my eyes; it’s that easy to get used to a crappy user interface (and that’s what Maemo is, trust me).

The fact that I like Maemo better than a full KDE or Gnome desktop environment on a tablet is not lack of taste, but a lack of alternatives. I wouldn’t mind having something better, but there isn’t, so there.

So please blame everyone else BUT me that there is nothing like the NewtonOS these days. If you specifically want a modern NewtonOS back, start developing it, thank you very much.

Seriously, I liked the Palmpilot much better back then, because it was a pragmatic and affordable solution and the hardware device was actually portable, unlike the brick that was the Newton back then and unlike those bricks they call UMPC today.

(This is my other major complaint about the N800: It is still far too big to carry it around all the time!)

Newton OS, in its Einstein and Relativity incarnation (which really should be looked at as a User Interface layer on top of a Linux kernel), isn’t dead yet. I wish there was some way I could assist in its development, but Paul Guyot doesn’t even accept money from anyone, so there…

The (Nokia?) philosophy of the Internet Tablet as an extention of your phone is a good one, albeit perhaps a little bit ahead of its time, and my argument against people who complain about the absence of PIM applications on the IT is always the same: PIMs should be on your phone, so rather than complaining to Nokia about PIMs on the IT, complain about the lack of synchronisation of PIMs between your phone and your IT.

Anyone who’s ever used a Sony Ericsson P910 may understand this better: the P910 has a small screen (keypad closed) where you can consult your PIM, but can’t do much in the way of editing, and a large touchscreen with full PDA functionality. In my view, the phone should be simple and easy, and the IT should take on the smart part of the smartphone. I hope this makes sense…